Chapter 2
Ethan found me two minutes later.
He took one look at my torn dress, the blood on my face, and his face went white.
“What happened?” he said, his voice cracking.
He pulled off his suit jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders, his hands shaking.
I nodded toward Victoria, who was leaning against the balcony rail, sipping champagne like she hadn’t just destroyed my life.
“Your mother,” I said.
Ethan turned to her.
“Mom?”
Victoria rolled her eyes.
“She tripped,” she said, loud enough for the nearest guests to hear. “Clumsy thing. Nearly took me down with her.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd.
Of course they believed her.
She was Victoria Hale.
I was just the orphan girl who’d married into the family.
Ethan looked from her to me, his eyes torn.
I loved him.
God, I loved him.
But I knew, in that moment, that he’d spent his whole life letting his mother walk all over him.
That choosing me would mean choosing to lose everything he’d ever known.
“Is that true?” he said to me.
I pulled the key from my pocket.
Wait.
No.
The key was in the ring.
The ring was at the bottom of the pool.
I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “She tore my dress. She took my mother’s ring. She threw it in the pool.”
Victoria laughed.
A sharp, barking sound.
“Liar,” she said. “You were always jealous of what we have. You’d make up anything to get attention.”
Ethan hesitated.
I saw the doubt in his eyes.
And I made a decision.
I couldn’t tell him about the key yet.
Not until I had the ring back.
Not until I knew I could trust him.
“I’m not lying,” I said, my voice steady. “I’m going to get it back.”
I turned and walked away before he could answer.
The hotel staff tried to stop me when I headed for the pool, but I brushed past them.
It was nearly midnight.
The party was winding down, most of the guests leaving in their fancy cars.
The pool was dark, the water black and still.
I kicked off my shoes.
Dove in in my torn dress and Ethan’s suit jacket.
The water was cold, shocking the breath out of me.
I opened my eyes, the chlorine stinging, and searched the bottom.
My hands scraped against tile, against small rocks, against nothing.
I came up for air, gasping, and dove again.
And again.
On the fifth dive, my fingers hit something hard and smooth.
The ring.
I grabbed it, pushed off the bottom, and broke the surface coughing.
I clung to the edge of the pool, shivering, and held the ring up to the faint light of the patio lamps.
The diamond was still there.
The band was intact.
I slid the tiny panel aside with my thumbnail.
The key was still inside.
Small, brass, stamped with the bank’s logo.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“Lila?”
I looked up.
Ethan was standing on the patio, his shoes off, his pants rolled up, ready to jump in after me.
He saw the ring in my hand.
Saw the blood on my knuckle where it had been torn off.
Saw the key.
His eyes widened.
“What is that?” he said.
I climbed out of the pool, water dripping off me onto the concrete.
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering so hard my teeth chattered.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “About your mother. About my mom.”
I told him everything then.
About my mom working as a secretary for his father’s real estate company.
About how she’d found out Victoria and Harold had stolen millions from the low-income housing project they’d been hired to build.
About how she’d planned to turn the evidence over to the DA.
About the car crash a week later.
The police said it was an accident.
A rainy night.
A slick road.
My mom had lost control.
But I’d never believed it.
And now I had proof.
Ethan sat down on the concrete step next to me, his head in his hands.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “My mom… she’s strict, but she’s not a killer.”
“Is she?” I said, holding up my torn dress, my bleeding cheek. “Look at what she did to me tonight. Over a ring. What do you think she’d do to keep from going to prison?”
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he looked up at me.
His eyes were wet.
Scared.
But sure.
“I believe you,” he said.
He reached out and took my hand.
The hand with the ring.
The hand with the key.
“What do we do now?” he said.
May you like
I looked toward the hotel, where Victoria’s suite light was still on.
“Now,” I said, “we finish what my mom started.”
